


The Image of a Rose

by Talashar



Category: Myst Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:34:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27304930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talashar/pseuds/Talashar
Summary: There is a branch of the tree where Achenar didn't lose.
Kudos: 2





	The Image of a Rose

**Author's Note:**

> The events implied here do not quite fit what Revelation tells us about the brothers' pre-Myst plot, but for the sake of this story I've chosen to quietly ignore that! (After all, it is another branch…)

_And a son will carry the burden of his father  
And he will lay heavy stones upon it  
And he will walk in freedom_  
—The Words of the Watcher

He took his time sharpening the knife. There was no hurry, and anyway hadn’t Father always said that patience improved every effort? A sharp knife was a good knife, that much he had learned over the years. “Be patient, be patient!” he said aloud. “I’ll get to you soon enough!” He heard but ignored the whimpers from behind him.

Finally he was satisfied with his work and turned around. Klad was still where he had left him, bound to the wall between the two lamps that had been Em and Thel. There was in Klad’s eyes the wonderful look of absolute despair, and he stood drinking it in, finding it lovelier than any of his dear brother’s paintings. 

“Why do you look so frightened?” he asked. “Don’t you understand what’s about to happen to you? Do you want me to explain it? But then, I never was a very good teacher, or a good student! The only way to learn is by practice, it really is! And I’ve practiced oh so much.”

“Please,” said Klad. He would be very thirsty by now. “Kill me quickly.”

“You’re not listening. A slow death is better. Oh! Shall we discuss linking theory?” He giggled at Klad’s look of confused panic. “Father never taught me much about it. Hold still, hold still! He tried, when my brother and I were younger, but there were so many adventures to have that we never, we never applied ourselves. After he died, I had to gather what I could from his journals, and through my experiments.

“Father called it the Great Tree of Possibility. There’s a branch for every possibility you can think of. A branch where I starting cutting along your left shoulder and a branch where I started cutting along your right. But they’re both just images. You and I are images.

“Oh! And there’s an Age where I was never born! An Age where you were never born! An Age where I was nothing more than a copy of my father, going from place to place doing whatever my subjects tell me! An Age where the flames left that clever blue trap untouched, where I was tricked like my brother! Countless Ages where I never came here. I’ll let all those other copies of me do the things Father and Mother taught me, while I am _free_.”

“But you, you’re the lucky one! Because you share an Age with me! You’re listening to me, aren’t you? You’re paying attention?” He struck Klad across the cheek, leaving a bloody handprint, but Klad’s eyes were lifeless. “Oh!” He had been so carried away by his words that he hadn’t seen Klad die. For a moment anger surged in him, then he laughed and let it fall away. There was another Age where he had seen that wonderful moment, wasn’t there? 

He left Klad there in the room—he would work on his art later—and climbed up the steps of the narrow passageway. He stepped out onto the deck of the Age that both was and wasn’t Stoneship, wet from the recent storm. Still more ink and paper; still more skulls to dig up from the image of flesh that hid them. The ending had not yet been written.


End file.
